‘Oh, I do admire her so. I was invited to attend her Cercle Social . . . once. Orléans does not know. And when I was first married to Monsieur de Buffon I had the good fortune of attending Madame Le Brun’s salon upon several occasions. It is a great pity she has emigrated. She is too much in love with her Queen and has been utterly ruined by all she glimpsed at Versailles.’ She continued apace as I sketched her, her face brightly animated by conversation.

Madame de Buffon was not at all as I had imagined. I knew not what to make of her candour or her inquisitiveness. She was not the dragoness against whom I had been warned, but her strong-headed opinions gave me pause nonetheless.

Her talk soon turned to books. She mused on those she had read, which were a fair few in English: Mr Fielding, Mr Smollett, Mr Richardson and, most recently, Mrs Radcliffe. She enquired as to my thoughts upon their style and stories and claimed to favour Mr Fielding over Mr Richardson, though she preferred Rousseau’s Julie to any novel in English.

‘Monsieur Rousseau claims that nature did not intend women to live as do men, but designed them for entirely different roles in life. Do you believe that is so?’ she pressed.

‘I am not certain I know,’ I replied as I sketched. ‘While a woman’s form differs from that of a man, I do not believe what lies within her head is so dissimilar. I do not believe myself incapable of reason, nor do I acquire knowledge in a mode unlike that of a man. But, as I have never been a man, I have no manner of determining whether my conclusions are correct.’

La Buffon clapped her hands together and laughed heartily at my response.

‘How clever and witty you are, mademoiselle,’ she exclaimed. ‘Indeed, I cannot say for certain what lies within the mind of any of that sex.’

As she spoke I noticed her eye was drawn to something beyond the window. Her gaze then fixed itself quite intently, which rendered her features even more cat-like. I turned and observed two figures approaching arm in arm from across the garden. One appeared to be attired in the blue uniform of a high-ranking officer, while lilac muslin blew against the legs of the other. It was only when they appeared at the door that I recognized the stout gentleman beneath his crescent-shaped hat to be the Duc de Biron. La Buffon made not a sound, but stared impassively at the pair until they passed over the threshold.